Chapter Seventy-Nine: The Daoist of the Violet Dawn

Passing through the medicinal garden, Li Yang entered the rear hall of the temple. Compared to the front hall, the rear was far more modest—a dilapidated little pavilion built of rough stones appeared before him. Pushing open the rotting wooden door, he saw several dusty bookshelves within. His face lit up with delight as he gazed at the bamboo scrolls and white jade porcelain vials displayed there and stepped forward eagerly.

But the moment he touched the bamboo scrolls, before he could even unfurl one, a faint breeze from his palm caused them to instantly disintegrate into a pile of dust. Picking up a porcelain vial and opening it, he found nothing but black powder inside.

“Alas... It seems that too many years have passed. These medicinal texts and pills have all decayed beyond recognition.” Though disappointed, Li Yang did not despise the few jade vials left on the shelf. He gathered them up one by one. After all, they were finely carved from top-grade white jade—at the very least, he could not say this trip had been for nothing.

With some regret, he left the rear hall and returned to the front of the temple.

“Hm... What’s this?” Just as he was about to leave, his eye caught something: in the right hand of the great statue standing in the main hall, raised high, was what looked like a black box.

“Greedy little wretch!” As Li Yang reached for the black box in the statue’s hand, a layer of pure light suddenly rose from the statue’s surface. An illusory image of an old Daoist enveloped the idol. In an instant, Li Yang was flung backward.

“Primordial spirit...” Staring at the white-haired, ancient-robed apparition suspended in midair, Li Yang’s face filled with vigilance.

“Hmph! You really are insatiable. You took my mortal remains, seized my sect’s treasure, and now you even want to take the last of my possessions!” The old Daoist snorted coldly, casting Li Yang a sideways glance full of disdain.

“Senior, may I ask who you are?” The primordial spirit was the exclusive domain of immortals. Though the old Daoist seemed to be nothing more than a wisp of spirit, Li Yang dared not underestimate such a being.

“Who I am is none of your business. If you’ve got nothing to do, be off with you!” With a wave of his voluminous sleeve, the Daoist sent the space around Li Yang shrinking rapidly, as if he would be crushed to a pulp in an instant.

Clang!

Just as Li Yang was about to succumb, the bright moon within his dantian suddenly erupted with a surge of icy energy. A colossal, phantom bronze gate rose up, forcibly propping open the constricting space. The gate was mottled with rust, carved with scenes of howling ghosts and a blood moon hanging in the sky, as if the spirits themselves might burst forth at any moment.

“The source of the Lord of the Underworld!” At the sight of the bronze gate, the old Daoist cried out in shock, his expression shifting rapidly.

“So, boy, do you truly seek my legacy?” After a long silence, the Daoist’s expression calmed and his tone softened as he fixed Li Yang with a meaningful gaze.

“Senior, you see clearly. Of course I desire your inheritance!” Seeing the old Daoist’s attitude shift, Li Yang summoned his courage and replied boldly. After all, such a momentous opportunity was right before his eyes—the inheritance of an immortal, rare even in ancient times, let alone today.

In this age, when the path to enlightenment was so arduous, Li Yang would not let slip even the smallest crumbs, never mind a treasure of this magnitude.

“Very well. You show some sense of responsibility. I’ll make a wager with you: I will do all in my power to help you achieve the Dao, but when your cultivation reaches a certain level, you must either help me restore my immortal body or secure for me a divine seat in the netherworld, at least one of the Azure Pardon rank or higher. Do you dare agree?” As he spoke, the Daoist’s aura surged, stirring the ruined space and boring his gaze into Li Yang.

Li Yang felt as if the Daoist could see through his very soul, as if the whole world pressed down upon him. Cold sweat poured down his back, soaking his clothes.

“Very well, senior. I accept your terms!” After a moment’s hesitation, Li Yang gritted his teeth and agreed. In his view, these were matters far in the future—at the very least, not until after he achieved immortality. For now, he would seize the benefits before him; who could say what the future held?

“Excellent!” The instant Li Yang agreed, a great cloud of celebratory light surged from the Daoist’s head, upon which appeared three blossoms of gold, silver, and jade, and five surging white waves of different hues rolled within the cloud.

“Heaven and Earth bear witness—let the pact be sealed!” With a thunderous shout, the Daoist sent the auspicious cloud expanding through the temple and the entire space. The air split open, and the stars of the cosmos projected through the rift. A mysterious resonance from the depths of the universe imprinted itself on Li Yang’s mind.

Li Yang immediately understood: this was an ancient contract of the Heavenly Dao, and any who violated it would suffer the backlash of the Five Decays of Heaven and Man.

“Take it, boy!” Now that the pact was concluded, the Daoist tossed the black box to Li Yang and his form dissolved into a streak of white light, shooting into Li Yang’s sea of consciousness.

As he opened the box, a wild and ancient aura rushed forth. Within, a sheet of unknown beast hide was curled up, its surface etched with myriad runes of thunder.

“The Grand Compendium of the Chaotic Celestial Thunder!” As he unfurled the beast hide, strange tadpole-like script danced before his eyes. Though he did not recognize the characters, their meaning became clear to him as if by instinct.

“What an audacious name!” Li Yang was stunned the moment he read the title. He knew it all too well—from his past life’s tales of the Great Desolation, this was said to be the thunder law Pangu used to split heaven and earth.

“Hmph! What do you know, boy? This thunder law is the innate divine art of my own lineage’s Patriarch of the Way of Thunder. It is the very root of our unmatched power in ancient times!” As Li Yang silently questioned the title, the old Daoist’s disgruntled voice sounded in his mind.

With a sigh tinged with regret, the Daoist continued, “But to truly master the Celestial Thunder is nigh impossible. Otherwise, I would not have ended up in such a sorry state.”

Hearing this, Li Yang grew silent and studied the thunder law compendium in his hands.

This thunder law was a cultivation method that harmonized essence, energy, and spirit, utterly different from the five modern paths of Heaven, Earth, Man, God, and Ghost. Clearly, it was a practice from a far more ancient era.

The first step of this method was exceptionally harsh: draw down heavenly thunder into the body to forge a form of living lightning.

Faced with such an incredible practice, Li Yang immediately suspected the old Daoist was playing a joke on him. Heavenly thunder was not something an ordinary person could touch—never mind cultivate. Anyone who dared to try, he thought, must be mad or foolish.

“Enough. Put this thunder law aside for now; it is not something you can attempt at your current level. Humanity today is nothing like those of ancient times. Without a perfected immortal body, don’t even think about it.” As if sensing his doubts, the old Daoist spoke again.

“Did ancient people truly cultivate such methods?” Li Yang could not help but ask.

“Of course. In ancient times, people lived a hundred years with ease, their vitality undiminished, each one possessed of an innate Dao body filled with energy. By today’s standards, every one of them would be a martial saint or a terrestrial immortal. Don’t you see?”

“That...that’s hard to believe!” The explanation left Li Yang dumbfounded. By this logic, he wouldn’t even measure up to an ordinary person in ancient times.

“Hmph! If you find it unbelievable, that only shows your lack of experience. In those days, the world was filled with wild beasts of unimaginable strength. In such an environment, human bodies had to be equally formidable just to survive. As the seas turned to mulberry fields and the Dao changed, the energy that sustained that world vanished, and human bodies declined, generation by generation.” The Daoist’s tone was laden with longing for that lost era.

“Senior, then what calamity befell that world to make it as it is now?” Li Yang’s curiosity was piqued.

“My sect, the Divine Thunder Path of Violet Firmament, descends from the ancient swamps of thunder. We have always passed our art down to only one disciple per generation, each head of the sect taking the name Violet Firmament. By my time, only fragments of ancient records remained, so I know little of what befell the world.”

He sighed and continued. “I was born before the Spring and Autumn period, attained the Dao after the pre-Qin era. Several centuries ago, heavenly fire descended, the Five Decays of Heaven and Man swept the land, and, coinciding with the exhaustion of the earth’s meridians, I too was caught in the disaster. Forced to abandon my body, I could only cling to survival by merging my spirit with the ancestral idol.”

“But, as fate would have it, misfortune followed misfortune. Without me anchoring it and with the earth veins failing, this paradise weakened and cracks appeared. At the same time, the world outside was in the throes of dynastic upheaval, and a few evil cultivators discovered the location of my sanctuary. They led rebel armies to invade.”

The Daoist sneered, then went on, “Though a dragon stranded in shallow waters, I was not to be trifled with. In my wrath, I sealed the entire domain, trapping hundreds of thousands of soldiers inside. But I had not anticipated that so many corpses would turn into evil miasma and blood fiends, corrupting the land. Even my own body was affected, gaining sentience and transforming into a corpse demon.”

“Alas... It was all fate’s doing.”

“So that’s how it happened!” Only now did Li Yang understand. No wonder this blessed land had fallen into such a state, overrun with evil spirits and deadly energy—more like the netherworld than a paradise. Yet this old Daoist was ruthless indeed, preferring to destroy his own foundation rather than let those rebel cultivators profit.

For an earth immortal, a paradise like this was the root of his power. Once defiled, his path was all but destroyed.